Michael Moynihan: Whatever you say, say nothing

Any reporter would clearly prefer a player at such an event to say something of interest but it's not just controversy we are after

24 April 2022; Galway manager Padraic Joyce is interviewed by RTE after the Connacht GAA Football Senior Championship Quarter-Final match between Mayo and Galway at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park in Castlebar, Mayo. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Early last week David Clarke from Mayo was on the Irish Examiner podcast, talking all things Gaelic football as the championship winds itself up like one of those little clockwork monkeys that beats a miniature cymbal.

Clarke came across well, thoughtful and engaged - an ideal interviewee.

Then he said this about his time on press night duty for Mayo: “Looking back, I feel sorry for a few of the reporters at those press nights. A few of us were sent out to say nothing to them. It was hard to get a story out of us.

“You were given a few pointers. It’s the same with every team — the other team are good, we think we can win, belief in the group, the process, all these words.

“I didn’t really like doing them, but it was something I could do for the team. There were times I was put out when I wasn't even playing, it was embarrassing for everyone. But you went out there and gave your spiel and hopefully nothing blew up.” ]

Credit to Clarke for being conscious of his role, not to mention owning up to a sensation of embarrassment about being “sent out to say nothing”.

Any reporter would clearly prefer a player at such an event to say something of interest — not necessarily controversial, which seems to be the zero-sum game people think reporters are engaged in. Contrary to general belief, a reporter isn’t necessarily hunting an inflammatory headline so much as some class of a story that might keep a reader awake while reading it.

Something else Clarke points up is embarrassment, though not quite the kind he means.

The Germans probably have a specific term to describe the real-time contradiction enacted when a highly educated, intelligent young man parrots a few hackneyed cliches — per management instructions — rather than speaking his mind. All involved are probably too shy to point out that the average pre-All-Ireland final interviewee sounds as though he’s plagiarising a match programme from 1978 because of that sense of mutual embarrassment.

And that contradiction mirrors another, in a far wider context, when those same young men are trusted to perform hugely demanding physical feats in front of 80,000 spectators and a million TV viewers — but can’t be trusted, apparently, to speak honestly into a tape recorder.

Of course, you also need to be careful what you wish for. Honesty may lead to some unfiltered experiences. Even the most deluded reporter has to admit that a faux-relaxed chat with members of the fourth estate is not something a sportsperson — any person, really — looks forward to.

The athlete can often make that very clear. Often it’s all too obvious, in fact, that the sense even of a necessary chore has curdled into bad-humoured compliance, whether it’s the Ireland rugby international who just laughed at a question or the jockey who answered four consecutive questions with monosyllables. (“I think we’ll leave it there altogether, will we?” was my craven exit line).

Or, indeed, the (current) intercounty hurler who said talking to the press was the last thing on earth he wanted to do, or words to considerably more pungent effect.

I understand that point of view as well.

I’m  one of those reporters. How could I not?

Staying quiet on Páirc Uí Rinn

Many thanks to all who have been in touch about the decision which was made last week. You know, the one concerning the Munster SFC semi-final, which is now to be played in Páirc Uí Rinn on May 7th.

I know that some of you who have been in touch from . . . west of Ballyvourney, put it that way, may be looking for an opinion or a comment on the proceedings. Again, I am grateful for those communications.

When it comes time to offer an opinion on such matters I rely on a long-held governing principle which stops me from looking like a bit of a dope.

At such times I cast my mind back to a committee meeting in Leinster House I attended in a professional capacity. The committee was hearing submissions on tobacco consumption, and on this particular day the representatives of the tobacco industry were in attendance.

Along with their lawyer.

The committee chairman opened with his trump card, asking the lawyer if he smoked.

I don’t, said the lawyer.

Aha, said the chairman — what an exhibition of hypocrisy we have here, a representative of the tobacco industry who doesn’t smoke? Why don’t you smoke?

I just don’t, said the lawyer, offering no further elaboration — and letting silence descend upon the committee meeting until the chairman was unable to stay quiet any longer, and the proceedings got underway.

Of course, once those proceedings got under way in earnest the lawyer duly filleted any committee members who made any noises which were even vaguely anti-tobacco, ensuring a completely different kind of silence descended in due course.

Your columnist plans a similar approach to events related Páirc Uí Rinn. Stay in touch.

Time to cut loose with the haircuts

Friday evening. Glass of Albariño in one hand, Club Milk in the other.

(TV remote being operated by prehensile small toe.) 

I flicked on TG4’s coverage of the Ulster U20 football final between Cavan and Tyrone and . . . where is the individuality? Where are the characters?

According to one simple metric these players are base automatons, but it’s a failsafe measurement. We had a depressing uniformity in haircuts on show, with a couple of dozen naked napes on display.

The sheer number of bald polls was slightly mesmerising, though that might have been the Albariño, and while I hate to be pass-remarkable, quite a few of the haircuts were the absolute opposite of flattering.

I understand the reluctance to stick out - these are all members of a team, of course - but don’t any of these chaps have a mirror at home, or an older relative?

In an effort to raise standards I’m happy to go out on a limb and offer a prize to the best haircut to be found at inter county U20 level or lower, and by best I mean the least typical.

And by least typical I mean in comparison with the cut-price peaky-blinder uniformity on show everywhere else.

Converted to Eagleton

In the mood for a middlebrow read?

How about Critical Revolutionaries: Five Critics Who Changed the Way We Read by Terry Eagleton?

I was dithering about this one until I stumbled across the following passage in one review: “Here, for instance, he shows us the riotously promiscuous William Empson trying to get off a charge for importuning his taxi driver in Tokyo by claiming that he found it hard to tell Japanese men and women apart. Or TS Eliot, begetter of the hugely influential Tradition and the Individual Talent, whose favourite conversational topic was the various routes of London buses.”

Consider me converted and anxiously awaiting small talk on the journey of the 226 (via Haven Green / Ealing Broadway).

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